


Bodies

by NoirSongbird



Series: Shadows Fall AU [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Blood and Gore, Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death, Voltron is the bad guys, dark au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-27 20:54:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12590320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoirSongbird/pseuds/NoirSongbird
Summary: In another reality, one where Voltron is the instrument of a mad Emperor and not the universe's last, best hope, the Paladins raid a rebel base, and find something very, very interesting inside.





	Bodies

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I'm coming to you with a slightly belated Halloween fic, introducing an AU I've been playing around with featuring evil versions of the Paladins. Please, _please_ mind the warnings; this is a lot darker and gorier than most stuff I write, and I've rated it Explicit for violence, not sexual content. Please let me know if it needs any additional tags!
> 
> That said, if you're into that, let's dive in.

“Katia,” Shiro’s voice crackled over the communicators, “how’s getting through the door going?”

“Working on it,” Katia replied, sounding almost bored. “Their encryption’s getting better, but not good enough.”

“Well get it _going!”_ Lance said. “I’m the one that has to hang out and wait for you guys to start flushing them out, it’s so _boring._ ”

“Get a stress ball or something,” Keith said. “Katia, you can make something like that, right?”

“Probably,” Katia said, “but we both know it wouldn’t help.”

“Hey!” Lance said, sounding offended.

“I could always just tear the doors off over here,” Hunk offered. “Wouldn’t exactly be _hard.”_

“And then our in would be compromised and they’ll have time to start evacuating. No, we wait for Katia.” Shiro said, in a voice that brooked no argument.

“ _Anyway,”_ Katia interrupted, “doors open in 3, 2…” All four sets of doors into the Spear of Palosa’s outpost hissed open at the same time, and eight very surprised Spear of Palosa guards, two at each entrance, were confronted with four of the Paladins of Voltron. They were in the full gear of the Order, pale white and pastel armored bodysuits and full facemasks, and each bore the ceremonial polearms that gave the order its name, but armor and weapons were only so much against a surprise attack by the Paladins.

Shiro’s claw bayard tore out one throat, while a shot rang out over his shoulder and dropped the second.

“Thanks, Lance,” he said.

“Got your back, boss,” Lance said chirpily, like he hadn’t just blown a hole in someone’s skull.

Keith sized up the two opponents in front of him, and barely seemed to move, he was so fast — a pair of daggers were drawn, one in each hand, and he darted past them, opening up their throats as he went.

Hunk picked one up and slammed him into the other, knocking them both into and _through_ a wall effortlessly, quintessence-infused power armor glowing a bright, eerie gold.

Katia regarded the two men in front of her, and snapped her wrist, whiplike bayard wrapping around both of them, yanking them together, and delivering a lethally powerful current. They died screaming, and Katia sighed.

“I’m gonna guess people heard that,” she said.

“They also probably heard Hunk making a new door,” Keith pointed out dryly, smacking the panel to open the doors in front of him.

“Yeah, probably,” Hunk acknowledged as he stepped through the hole he’d made. There were sounds of frenzied movement deeper within the base, and suddenly an alarm was screeching from somewhere, and Shiro sighed, moving deeper into the base himself.

“Lance?” He asked.

“Ready to pick off anyone dumb enough to come outside through the entrances Katia can’t close,” Lance said confidently.

“Good,” Shiro said. “We want minimal survivors.”

“Not none!” Katia said, busily working on her holoscreen as she walked, cracking further and further into the base’s systems, until the alarm shut down and the doors slammed shut behind them. “I could use some new test subjects, the old ones are getting desensitized.”

She didn’t even look up from her screen as a group of Spears of Palosa moved to encircle her, snapping her bayard around one-handed and looping it around one’s neck and _yanking_ hard enough that the crack was audible. She flung the corpse into another one of them, and then activated the bayard’s electricity, and there was an absolutely horrific scream as the second one died.

“Anyone else?” Katia asked, finally moving her eyes away from the screen to size up her position. There were four of them left, brandishing the Spear’s signature polearms, none of them looking eager to back down. “Four fully trained Altean warriors against one Paladin? Don’t those odds seem a little stacked to you?”

“Your reign of terror ends here, monster!” One of the Alteans shouted, and Katia sighed, snapping her bayard back into its shorter bladed form.

“I warned you,” she said.

Katia was smaller than any of them, but it didn’t matter. She was quick, and unhesitating, and she ducked under a spear sweep from the one nearest to her and drove her bayard into his gut, flicking it up and slicing him open to the collarbone. He went down with a horrifying gurgle. She spun, and the second parried her strike with his spear while the third came in for an attack from her side, which she slid out of the way of, moving her into the path of the third, whose spear smacked hard against her armored shoulder.

“Ooh, look, you can work together!” She said brightly, and then she spun and brought her bayard across the throat of the one who had hit her, and in a quick motion snapped it into whip form, launching it at the top for a support post and using the momentum to swing herself forward, feet slamming into the chest of one of her two remaining attackers. She snapped her bayard back and drove it into her neck hard enough to sever her head from her shoulders, arterial spray splattering Katia’s face.

She turned to the last one, who was staring in horror at the fallen bodies of his comrades, and grinned. He began to back away, and Katia strode forward, cornering him against a wall and pressing her bayard against his chest.

“I’m not gonna kill you,” she said, and then she activated the shock setting, only high enough to knock him unconscious. “You’re much more useful to me alive.”

 

* * *

 

Outside, Lance trained his scope on the dome they suspected would be lowered to allow ships to escape in the event of an attack. As much as he’d joked about boredom, he was wholly focused on the task at hand, breathing slow and even, waiting for the right moment.

“Come on, little rats, come scurrying out…” He said, voice soft and singsong. Finally, the dome began to open, and he watched as it revealed a platform full of people scurrying for fighters. “Oh, this’ll be fun.”

He took a breath, focused his scope and performed the mental trick to adjust his cybernetic eyes and uplink them properly, and started taking shots. One after another, panicky Spears dropped, and Lance watched as the remaining ones went into a frenzy, trying to direct a defense against something they were terribly under-equipped to deal with.

He caught a glimpse of a glint of light on glass as he moved his scope to take another shot, and felt adrenaline rush through his veins.

Finally, _finally_ they were doing the smart thing. The _fun_ thing, for him. Nothing was more exciting, as far as Lance was concerned, than a proper sniper duel. He would win, of course, there was no other outcome—between his enhanced eyes and over a decade of training, nothing the Spear could field was even _close_ to on his level—but it was nice that they were trying.

Before, they’d mostly just panicked like the terrified, outclassed headless chickens they were.

He focused on the glint of the other rifle, and turned up both his eyes’ focus and his scope’s zoom, pinpointing the other rifle. Its owner had set up behind a stack of crates, and was actually fairly well hidden—Lance was almost impressed. They were trying, at least.

He lined his shot up with the other sniper’s scope, aimed, and fired.

He heard cries of horror and a scream of agony, loud enough to reach his distant perch, and grinned darkly, returning his focus to picking off the escapees. A few of them had made it into a ship and it was starting to take off, and Lance clicked his tongue.

“No, no, none of that,” he said, and he aimed, and fired, aiming for the reactor core.

The ship exploded in a shower of fire and debris, raining down on the remaining Spears on the platform.

Lance took aim at the remaining ships. No reason to risk anyone else getting any clever ideas.

 

* * *

 

Hunk was unsubtle. That was a constant, with him, but he was particularly unsubtle when crashing through Spear bases to tear them apart.

Sometimes, quite literally.

He crashed through a wall and into what was probably a training deck, and took a moment to revel in the shocked yells that greeted his arrival.

“Arm up!” One of the Spears said, and Hunk found himself on the end of half a dozen spear points.

“Aw, look, it’s almost a fair fight,” he said, and then he threw himself at the one that had shouted—a leader, clearly, and therefore a priority target—and bodyslammed him into the ground, the weight and force of his power armor leaving a shallow impact crater around where they hit the floor.

Hunk was pretty sure he was dead, but there was no use not finishing the job.

So he grabbed the top of his head, and _yanked,_ and it came off with a disgusting tearing noise.

Hunk stood up and bounced the masked head in his palm, eyes drifting over the rest of the assembled Spear fighters, all frozen in horror.

“Anybody else wanna come at me?” He asked. “No? Too bad.” He called up his bayard, and began firing off bursts of the massive gun. The first blast tearing one of their number apart seemed to shock them back into action, and the remaining four leapt at Hunk all at once, and it descended rapidly into a free-for-all brawl. He used his gun as a bludgeon, knocking two of them into each other and then firing a single powerful shot that left both dead on the ground.

He was glad for his full body armor, and for the extra strength it gave him, because it meant he could fend off attacks without having to fear. Spears bounced off his armor, and one of the fighters fumbled for a gun—but before she could raise it to shoot, Hunk rocketed forward and punched a hole through her chest. She died with a pathetic little gurgle, and Hunk yanked his fist back, turned, and ripped the halberd out of the last of his attackers’ hands. It reverted to its basic staff form, but he still used it to sweep their legs out from under them, and with all the force his armor could deliver, he drove it downward into their chest, pinning them to the floor.

“What...are you,” they gasped, breathing wet with blood. Hunk grinned viciously behind his helmet.

“The Yellow Paladin of Voltron.” He said, and then he pulled the staff out and drove it in a second time, and they screamed and went limp.

 

* * *

 

Shiro was a silent shadow, moving through the base and leaving a trail of corpses in his wake. There was no need to draw attention, not when Hunk was doing plenty of that. He could hear chatter from the other Paladins in his ear, but he tuned it out. If it was important, he would know.

He wasn’t here for chaos and mayhem, not the way Lance or Pidge or Hunk were. Shiro has a specific mission—the elimination of the base’s commander, a traitorous commander by the name of Calixte. This, for Shiro, was personal—he’d trained Calixte himself, fought by his side on the field, and discovering that he was an agent for the Spear had made Shiro sick.

He’d trusted _Keith_ to Calixte, on an operation. An operation where Keith had ended up badly injured because he was ambushed by a Palosa squadron. At the time, Shiro had blamed the vagaries of bad luck and his lover’s own recklessness, but with the knowledge that Calixte had been feeding information to the Spear….

It was obvious exactly what had happened. He’d nearly gotten Keith _killed._

Shiro was going to _tear him apart._

He ripped a door off its hinges with his mechanical arm, tossing it aside, and found himself in a darkened, empty room. Empty except for one man, a tall Altean with dark pink hair and bright blue eyes, dressed in the Spear of Palosa uniform but unmasked.

“Calixte,” Shiro snarled.

“I suspected you would find me,” Calixte said, and he brought his elegant glaive into a defensive position. Shiro brought up his mechanical hand, and it lit with quintessence, graceful plate edges becoming deadly-sharp blades and bayard forming over the back of his knuckles.

“No one else gets to have the pleasure of killing you,” Shiro said, and he darted forward, taking a swing that Calixte blocked. “You nearly got Keith killed.”

“My only regret is that I failed to, and that good Spears lost their lives in the process,” Calixte said, and he brought the blade around, and Shiro twisted on his toes to dodge.

“You should be glad he lived,” Shiro said, “because I’m _only_ going to kill you and put your fucking head on display. If he was _dead_ , I’d be dragging out your death until you were begging for it.”

“Alteans do not beg,” Calixte shot back, bringing his glaive around for a powerful swing. The fight was pitched, and Shiro had to admit Calixte was good—good enough to actually catch him, a strike across the cheek that bled slowly. Anyone less skilled would have lost their head.

Finally, Calixte brought the blade around for another large swing. Shiro ducked and moved in under the swing, and dismissed his bayard, shoving the sharp fingers of his prosthetic into Calixte’s chest.

“I changed my mind,” he said, gauntlet sinking in. “We do a lot of heads on spikes around here. I think I’ll go for something else this time. Your traitor’s heart should do just as well.”

He tore it out, and Calixte died staring at him in pure, abject horror.

 

* * *

 

 _“Target eliminated,”_ Keith heard Shiro’s voice in his ear. _“The base commander is dead. Keith, progress?”_

“Getting into their detention area,” Keith replied. “Found the door, just need a hand to open it up.” He eyed the cowering door guard, and called up his sword bayard, then strode over and grabbed his hand, slamming it against the wall.

“You’ve got two choices,” Keith said. “Either you open the door for me, or I cut your hand off.”

“The Spear of Palosa will not be intimidated by the likes of you, Red Right Hand,” the man spat.

“Is that right?” Keith asked. He brought his sword around and slammed it solidly into his wrist, severing the hand. “‘Cause for people who aren’t intimidated by me, you seem to have a lot of trouble with the little things. Like my name.”

The man gave Keith a stone-faced stare, and his mask vanished and he spat at Keith’s feet. Keith growled and stabbed his bayard through his chest.

“You traitors need to learn some fucking respect,” Keith said, and he unsummoned his bayard and strode over to the hand scan panel insert into the wall. He yanked the armored glove off the Spear’s hand, and pressed the palm against the scanner, and the door beeped and opened.

“Hey, Brice, what the hell is—fuck!” There was only one person in the room behind the door, clearly a monitoring station for the detention area. He was sitting in a chair and watching a video, and he spun and started to stand, but Keith was faster, flicking a knife out of his wrist sheath and throwing it with precision to embed in the man’s throat. He gurgled, briefly, and then collapsed dead in his chair.

Keith pulled his knife out of the Altean traitor’s neck, and then let his eyes drift to the screen he had been watching. On it was a familiar figure.

Prince Lotor, one of perhaps two living Galra and their eternal quarry. He always seemed to manage to be one step ahead, and it drove Keith _mad._ In the video still, he was sitting alone in what looked like an interrogation room, head in his hands. He looked _tired,_ which as far as Keith was concerned was good news. They’d been chasing the Prince and the Spear with relentless enthusiasm in the past few months, each overtaken base leading them to another and another, and it was fairly clear to Keith that they were running the Spear, and the Prince, ragged.

The timestamp said this was only a few hours earlier, which always seemed to be how the game went with Lotor.

“Huh, hey Lance, looks like you just missed your boyfriend,” Keith said. Lance sighed, theatrically.

“Really? Lotor was here? I keep missing him by a hair, do you think he’s avoiding me?” There was something playful in Lance’s tone. “It’s rude, honestly.”

“What was Lotor even doing out here?” Hunk asked. “I mean, this isn’t exactly a major base.”

“Let’s find out,” Shiro said. “Keith, we’ll converge on you, and we can take a look. Lance, that means you too.”

“Oh thank fuck,” Lance said. Keith rolled his eyes, even though he knew none of the others could see it, and dragged the corpse out of the chair, dropping into it heedless of the blood that remained. A little more blood wasn’t exactly going to stand out on his armor at this point, anyway. He stared at the still image of Prince Lotor, as if by staring at his image he might discern where he’d fled to.

Shiro arrived first, and Keith stood up to greet him, slinging an arm around his shoulders and leaning in for a kiss. Shiro sighed and reciprocated, and Keith noticed two things—first, that there was a cut scored across his cheek, and second, he was holding a heart in his hands. Keith frowned and ran a thumb over the cut.

“Who did that?” He asked.

“Calixte,” Shiro said. “He got lucky, but he paid for it.” He bounced the heart in his hand, tossing it up and catching it. “This _was_ his.”

“Cool,” Katia said as she came on. Shiro offered it to her.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any storage containers on hand, would you?” He asked.

“As it happens,” Katia fished into her bag and produced a collapsible cold storage container, “I was planning to collect some specimens for study anyway, so I do.” She unscrewed the top, and Shiro dropepd the heart in, and she sealed it and tucked it away.

“Was that a _heart?”_ Hunk asked. Shiro nodded. “ _Awesome,”_ he said. Lance followed him soon after, gun slung over his shoulder. 

“What’s the story?” He asked.

“I think they had a prisoner here recently,” Keith said, and he walked back over to the chair. “Someone important enough for Lotor to interrogate personally.” Shiro followed him and sat in it, and Keith dropped in his lap, and Lance rolled his eyes. Keith shot him a brief glare. Lance gave him an unrepentant grin and leaned on the back of the chair, and Katia and Hunk gathered close too. Keith leaned over and started the recording. “I haven’t seen who it is, but—” he stopped as soon as the prisoner was brought in.

He was familiar. He was…he was _Shiro._

Well. Shiro but not quite—the styling of his armor was different, and his hair was shorter, none of the length that _his_ Shiro kept in a bun over his undercut. He looked exhausted, and also...confused; he was staring at the two Spear of Palosa guards holding his arms in abject puzzlement, and Lotor got an even more confused glance. He was hustled into a chair, and the two Spears hovered next to him, clearly paranoid even though he was bound and making no hostile moves.

(Keith couldn’t help but be a little proud of the fear his Shiro inspired, enough that they reacted the same way to what was clearly _another_ Shiro.)

“Well,” Shiro said, “that answers what Lotor was doing here.” He leaned around Keith and paused the recording. “Katia, can you download it?”

“On it,” she said. “I’m gonna take all their footage, just in case—might root us out some more traitors.”

“Good plan,” Shiro said.

“So, like, what _was_ that? Your weirdo doppelganger?” Lance asked, eyes wide.

“My alternate reality self, at a guess,” Shiro said, and his eyes were on the recording, focused on his other self. Keith couldn’t blame him; he couldn’t take his eyes away either. “Alfor had theories, but we’ve never touched another reality with actual people in it, just the between-spaces.” He frowned. “This is...fascinating.”

“A real traveler from an alternate reality,” Katia said, eyes wide and delighted. “There’s no _telling_ what we might discover, where we might be able to go!” She bounced on her heels. “We could spread the empire beyond this universe, into others!”

“Do you think since Shiro exists, the rest of us do too?” Hunk wondered.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Shiro said. A cold smile spread across his face. “We’ll have to find my other self and ask him.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr, at [noirsongbird!](http://noirsongbird.tumblr.com)


End file.
